Anyone else feel like it’s the Wild Wild West?

I agree @pinthrift that the Cable Company is good way to demo different cables.

Sorry, but I disagree unless you can’t find the cable you’re looking for on the used market. The discount on used cables is 50% or more, they cost very little to ship, and if they don’t work out just sell them for little/no loss and you can try as many as you like this way. In this regard paying The Cable Company to try different cables and then pay full price for cables is kinda nuts, again unless you’re looking for something that’s just not available on the used market. Then there are several excellent cable companies that sell direct and offer excellent quality and value and generous trial periods to see if they work in your system. Just my $0.02 FWIW.

You can count on the ageless debate…Analog (Vinyl) vs Digital (CD/Streaming)
 

@lalitk No doubt.  But analog is a mature technology relegated to relatively incremental improvements in products/technology while digital — and streaming in particular — is in its infancy by comparison and improving seemingly exponentially in both products and technology, hence my fascination and excitement where digital will be in 10 years.  Even today there are some members here with very nice analog and streaming setups who say the sound they’re getting from streaming now matches or even beats that from their analog gear, so if streaming is getting this close now…

@jjss49 Yup. I feel like I’ve learned more about improving the audio experience in the past couple years due to navigating the ins and outs of streaming than I had in a decade or more before. There’s nothing like striving to improve the streaming experience to teach you how much everything matters, and there’s nothing that’s done more to elevate my level of enjoying music as an audiophile than streaming because, in the end, it’s all about the music and streaming puts the whole world of music at your fingertips. And the exciting thing about streaming is that almost every upgrade you make in any part of the chain, no matter how small, almost always makes a significant improvement rather than the incremental — yet still meaningful — gains we usually experience once our systems reach a certain level. I think that’s what I meant when I termed this thread the Wild Wild West, because there are so many components to explore and almost every one can make a huge difference. It’s both so exciting yet also quite intimidating. Of course this comes with its frustrations and a pretty steep learning curve if you really care about achieving better sound, but man in the end it’s so worth it (anything worth doing, right?). IMHO, between the really excellent and affordable equipment available today along with the rapid advance of technology at the cutting edge and the ability to experience any music under the sun — much of it in hi res — at $15 or less per month makes this the best and most thrilling time ever to be an audiophile by far. One can only wonder and be excited in the anticipation of where we’ll be 10 years from now. I can’t even imagine.

@alpha100 — I’d recommend taking the Jitterbug out and see what you find.  When I first built my HeadFi rig I was using a Dragonfly Red and was happy, so I thought adding a Jitterbug would be a no-brainer improvement — wrong!  It ruined the transparency and imaging/soundstage and I returned it.  I later spoke with an industry insider/manufacturer who has contacts at Audioquest and he confirmed the Jitterbug has performance issues and they’re working on a redesign.  Just a thought FWIW. 

+2 @fastfreight Great perspective on how/why to get started with streaming and highlighting how you can start cheap/simple and upgrade piece by piece and get to your nirvana at your own pace and also in emphasizing that EVERYTHING matters.

@drbay I’m sure I must be missing something, but couldn’t you just route the TV’s audio output into an unused input on the Hegel?  All you’d need to do is just change the Hegel’s input to toggle between music and TV, no?

Digital is pretty easy, and comes naturally to me.

@thyname I hate you.  No offense. 

When a iFi Zen Stream has far more issues with operation and glitches than a $79 WiiM Mini streamer I think it is incumbent upon iFi to FIX their product or stop selling it to unsuspecting customers and wait until they can come out with a "MK. 2" version that works as it should.

@moonwatcher I tend to agree, but I will say I think I’m finally on to a fix and if it works I’ll be a pretty happy camper given the sound quality I’m getting for $399. And although I’m forced to use Wi-Fi now due to traveling, when I get home I’m plugging into a Wi-Fi extender via Ethernet cable, and from what I hear there’s no problem with that connection. I’m not sure this problem is unique to iFi, but that’s not much comfort and there’s absolutely no excuse for them not having phone support, which to my mind is inexcusable for a company of that size and I’m sure that’s losing them business. BTW, when I finally get this fixed I’ll do a separate post detailing the solution(s) that will hopefully help other unsuspecting victims of this nightmare.

@drbay You’ve got a really nice system, but I think the Node is a significant bottleneck to better performance. Many people here have experienced very significant improvements moving up the chain from the Node and I think it would be a good idea to at least try a better streamer — you could buy through Amazon and just return it if you don’t find meaningfully better sound. In your case I’d highly recommend looking at the Innuos Zen or Zenith (depending on budget) as they’re not only excellent streamers, but their Sense software is widely reported to sound fantastic. And as a huge bonus they have a built-in server and disc drive so you can load all your CDs into it, ditch the CD player altogether (although you would need to add a DAC), and have access to all your music from your chair — plus your CDs may even sound better than through your CD player as well. Anyway, just my $0.02 FWIW.

That’s sad but expected at those bargain bin prices. That’s why it’s just as important to select a streamer / server that provides a good customer service support with a robust OS.

@lalitk Point taken.  Unfortunately budget largely dictated my choice, and I assumed a company the size of iFi would have at least some form of phone support.  I’ll definitely not make that painful mistake again.  Were I doing it over I probably would’ve bought a used Innuos Mini Mk3 and added their upgraded power supply later, and I would’ve had a server and been able to ditch my CD transport altogether as a bonus.  Live and learn I guess.  My takeaway — some things are just worth paying for. 

Uh oh.

@baylinor Thanks a lot for the tip of uninstalling the app to get it to recognize the streamer again.  I didn’t think of that, and all the suggestions I got involved rebooting everything starting with the router, but I’m traveling so that’s not an option right now.  I do have a TP-Link AC2600 and a Wireworld Starlight 8 Ethernet cable so once I get home I’ll be going hardwired from that and hopefully that’ll be the end of this digital horror show.  Argh. 

Ok, I’ll start with a bittersweet post.  I recently bought an iFi Zen Steam (with iPowerX filter/power supply) to replace streaming from my iPad via a LavriCable adapter (big upgrade over the Apple Camera Adapter BTW) as per the suggestion of several experienced members here and they were 1000% right — the improvements of the Zen Stream were not at all subtle and has severely whet my appetite for what further improvements are possible.  Although the iFi Zen Stream seems to be a relative bargain for the sound quality per $, I have to say their customer support is ass.  There’s no phone support and you have to submit a support ticket and wait for a “support” person to respond via email, which in my case took a few days and resulted in a ridiculously sad recommendation that now requires me to send yet another “ticket” to which I’m sure I’ll get another inane response.  Sorry, but in this day and age this is absolutely archaic and unforgivable.  While I was very happy with the performance of the Zen Stream when it worked, if you’re not technically oriented I just can’t recommend this streamer as there’s basically no support if you encounter issues.  Very sad and unnecessary IMHO.